Well the guy from the movie studio got back to me and said I could come by and check out all the PVM's in person. I got there and met the owner and he was super cool,we chatted about gear for about 20 minutes in his office (NICE office) and why I wanted the PVM's. I told him about how they were perfect for classic games and he laughed and said he used to catch the editors playing on them when they were being used.
After we chatted he took me to one of the spare editing rooms where he had them all lined up and running on some studio gear,my jaw hit the floor. All of them had PERFECT picture and the geometry was EXCELLENT on all of them. I've had a PVM (20M4U) so I know what they look like,mine didn't look this good,these were NICE. A couple years ago they upgraded all of thier equipment and they just sat in the editing room in a corner,he didn't have the heart to throw them away because they cost alot of money (i bet). He said he purchased all of them brand new about 10 years ago and had them looked over every couple of years by a tech to keep them up to spec because they were used as their primary monitors for editing movies and commercials.
I was instantly sold of course. The problem was we never discussed price,the last time we emailed he said he didn't know what they were worth and needed to check,which is of course a bad sign.
So I braced myself and asked "how much are you asking"?
He said $500...
for all of them,this happened next...
So yeah,I go from a busted 20M4U to having
seven PVM's in the span of a week (picked up two more from a couple other studios). I might sell a couple of these locally for like $250 (that's a fair price, right?) just to make my money back because I had to dip into savings to buy all of these. It was once in a lifetime and I didn't want to regret it later.
My biggest tip if you are looking is to google your state and "movie editing studios" and just email them all. While I struck out at 20+ places,it only takes one to have them. And usually places like that have more than one.